At first I thought that his insight was pessimistic. Through the years, however, I learned that there was a wisdom in his view that the anticipation is the real source of pleasure. But that’s usually not true of our family gathering of 17 of us, including our adult children, their spouses and 7 grandchildren in a network of cottages where after all these years we are regarded as more than ‘summah people.’

What has always been so great about this time is that we can totally disconnect from modern technology because our cottages are completely outside of the range of high-speed—or even low-speed—connections. In the beginning our cottage didn’t even have what we now call a land line. The only potential intruder is the FedEx driver, whose services we usually manage to ignore.

The absence of such things when the kids were small forced us to talk and to listen to one another’s ideas, visions, aspirations and fears. Over a game of Old Maid or Monopoly, we had plenty of time to ‘commune,’ which my dictionary defines so well as ‘to communicate intimately.’ Those times cemented relationships that are so deep in every one of our hearts that we find it unthinkable to not return each year, regardless of how we are now scattered or how busy our lives might otherwise be.

Today Old Maid has given way to long adult dinners at one or other of the network of cottages we occupy. But the games continue for the second generation of kids for whom the trip to Maine is as treasured as it used to be for their parents, who counted the intervening days until we packed up the car in terms of the number of ‘sleeps’ remaining until we began the long drive.

In the cottage my wife and I occupy there is a tradition we have faithfully honored for 40 summers. The original owners, now long deceased, and their surviving son have always kept a logbook handy for their various guests to record their experiences in the cottage that sits prominently on a rocky ledge 20 or 30 feet above the waves that alternately retreat, collide, foam and throw an occasional spray high against the rocks. The stack of old logbooks is a testament to the magic of the place and a communication of the comings and goings of family members from childhood to college to jobs to marriages and births. Only happy thoughts are recorded in the log book. There is no formal prohibition, but the communications are touching, thoughtful and often wistful for such a simple existence.

My long ago roommate was right. This is the best time because it’s full of anticipation without the realization that the actual days will fly faster than we ever want. But oh the communication!

Deal argues that the stereotypes associated with the different generations are just that. After surveying more than 3,000 corporate leaders for her book Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young & Old Can Find Common Ground, she found that all generations of working age value the same things – family, respect, leaders who are trustworthy, opportunity to learn, and feedback.

While this may not surprise any member of the four generations in the workforce today, what may surprise at least some is what Deal found out about how the different generations react to change. Her research indicated that resistance or acceptance of change had less to do with age and more to do with what personal impact the change would have on the individual.

The CRM Learning blog quotes Deal, “The so-called generation gap is, in large part, the result of miscommunication and misunderstanding, fueled by common insecurities and desire for clout.”

Sounds like a fairly easy fix then, right? Just improve communication, create a more open environment where employees can express their concerns, and find ways to ensure that promotions occur with a consideration as to their affect beyond the individual being promoted. But wait…aren’t those steps management experts have been espousing for at least the last two decades?

Evidently, the old adage “the more the world changes, the more it stays the same” continues to be valid today; regardless of what generation you belong to.

No doubt the digital age that is truly in its infancy will inevitably have a profound impact on the communication style and behavior of today’s organizations. The growing interest and actual creation of internal social media is one of the hottest trends in our profession today. Not every organization is joining in, but the degree of interest reflected in various communication publications and meetings is intense. Social media alone, however, are not sufficient in the drive to open communication cultures.

The earliest adapters of greater openness seem to be the usual suspects—those organizations that are on the leading edge of all things new and novel. It’s a good bet that if there is going to be a significant movement to greater employee inclusion and openness that it will happen in these companies first. They are the leading candidates to create any movement toward less hierarchy and greater inclusion and collaboration.

Predictably, they will also continue to have as their imitators those companies that are receptive to new trends but that are not necessarily pioneers. They too fall in the category of early adapters. In both cases, they will for a time be in the minority as companies contemplate the benefits and risks of greater openness.

That leaves most of the remaining organizations today in a range of positions from heightened awareness of the potential opportunities posed by the digital age to caution occasioned by the perceived risks of openness. A small minority of the late adapters will continue to resist openness at every turn and to rely on spin and failed attempts at information control.

In the end what is likely to create movement toward open communication cultures are two forces. The first is the obvious one of the irresistibility of the information revolution powered by ubiquitous digital technology. The other is perhaps less obvious. It will be the eventual ability of our profession to connect all the dots and to create integrated information strategies that will knit together social media, the need for innovation and collaboration, and the strong business case for openness. That case is increasingly evident from a variety of respected researchers. It remains for us to do our job and to integrate the moving parts in a compelling fashion.

In fact, according to a Career Builder Survey, this scenario, as typical as it may sound, is actually far from typical.  That survey found 43 percent of workers ages 35 and older currently work for younger bosses, as do 53 percent of workers ages 45 and up, and 69 percent of workers who are 55 or older. That means not only are Baby Boomers being managed by Gen X or Gen Y, but sometimes the age gap can even result in a Gen X-er reporting to a Millennial manager.

What this has done has created some very unique management challenges. In particular, the survey also found that a significant percentage of workers (16 percent) who were 25 to 34 said they found it difficult to take direction from a younger boss, but only five percent of workers age 55 and up had problems with it.

Complaints about younger managers run the gamut and include micromanagement, a sense of entitlement, favoritism with younger colleagues, and not giving enough direction. Sound familiar?

These are age old and ageless management problems that people with advanced degrees, colleges with massive research budgets, and consultants with $500/hour billing rates have been trying to solve since some guy managing the fire told another guy to go get more wood.

It should be no surprise that you could be managing people who may not like you or you could be managed by a boss you believe doesn’t deserve his or her position. Most of us have or will be in one of these situations at some point in our career. Rather than fight either situation, imagine an alternative one where the tables could be turned—you’re the younger boss managing an employee either close to your age or much older, or you’re the one being managed. Then do everything you can to be the manager who’d get you to do your best work and the employee who’d do the best work for you. That isn’t a multi-step process, but it’s one many people of all ages have trouble taking the first step toward.

Their faith is in the wisdom of teams and the good intentions of corporate citizens. But to put it bluntly, many of them also seem to have an authority hang-up, a not uncommon perspective in Western countries with well-developed economies and long histories of relative prosperity. It’s also not surprising that well-educated workers with other options would chaff a bit under arbitrary decision-making by people who are used to having their directives obeyed and their privileges reserved.

But in the end, the hard truth is that someone has to be in charge and take responsibility for results. That makes some degree of hierarchy, regardless of how we soften it or label it, inevitable. The debate—if we can call it that—between corporate democracy and corporate hierarchy is cast in terms that are too black and white, too much ‘the good guys versus the bad guys.’

In an earlier version of this debate some years ago, there was a school of thought that argued that internal communication professionals should be permitted to play the role of investigative journalists in their organizations. The idea was that they would be given the democratic freedom to report events as they saw them, without review and with as much objectivity as their brothers and sisters in the public media. Not surprisingly, there were few, if any, senior leaders willing to fund a free press within their walls. So that particular discussion went nowhere although it did open things up a bit and make people more self-conscious about obvious spin in their communications.

No doubt the dialogue that is pervasive on the Internet and that is being advocated as healthy in the context of corporate social media will tend to influence more candid and more inclusive internal communication. But as the corporate autocrats used to complain as they contemplated, first, participative management, and later, employee engagement, “You think we’re going to sit around and take a vote on every decision?” The hard truth is that it’s highly unlikely any of us will ever see that day. More inclusion? Yes. More consultation? Yes. But outright corporate democracy and the end of hierarchy?  I wouldn’t put any money on it.

Our subject was differentiation in what has become a crowded profession. We spent a lot of time reflecting on the rather unsurprising premise that consulting is fundamentally about human relationships—personal relationships between the consultant and his or her clients and corporate relationships with customers, shareholders, communities and all of the other constituents that leaders care about.

The insights that flowed from that premise were informative, but what really struck me was the magic of a face-to-face conversation among five highly experienced and caring people. I was reminded once again that there is no virtual substitute for the dynamics of a face-to-face experience. There’s no way to capture the tone of voice, body language, energy, or enthusiastic interruptions for different ideas careening around the room. With the right participants wrestling with an important subject, meeting in person is an intellectual experience without equal.

The use of technology in today’s corporate environment has created a manic necessity for instant decisions and input, leaving us little time for such valuable face-to-face interludes. Instead, we conference call, email and text or tweet our half-formed thoughts as though these terms really were action verbs instead of nouns.

Clearly, the technology train has left the station. Although there’s probably little chance of going back to a more reflective time we should make time for face-to-face conversations in between rapid-fire messaging. Based on what I recently experienced, in-person conversations are not only useful for relationship building and productive outcomes, but they’re more efficient than you might think.

As I read through some of the blog posts that come up, I wonder whether or not any of the entities writing, consulting and complaining about this phenomenon have actually spent any time in a multi-generational workplace. Most of the contributors categorize baby boomers as the “me” generation, Gen Xers as the cynical generation, and the Millenials or Echo Boomers with
every term related to super-connectivity which leads me to believe that the closest they’ve gotten to “multi-generational” experience is their last family reunion.

I’m not criticizing the labels as much as I’m pointing out that what’s really driving the differences within the workforce is not just chronological age, but the speed and willingness of technology adoption at the individual level, regardless of how old we are.

My dad is in his mid-70s and spends more time on his computer with an ease that I never thought would be possible 20 years ago. He has multiple email  accounts, a Facebook page, and a large library of music. Yet, I have heard of CEOs in their 40s who still don’t quite get the concept of email — they ask their assistants to print them out for them — and certainly don’t understand Twitter, Facebook or even LinkedIn.  I’ve met 20-somethings who have sworn off as much social networking as they feel they can get away with, and 30-somethings who wouldn’t know how to live without their smartphone for a day.   Yet all of these people could very well work in the
same place together, separated or united as much by their affinity and adoption for the technology du jour as they are by their expectation of how they are managed and rewarded.

As with any issue, the multi-generational workforce is one that has multiple points of view and varied dynamics.  The sooner we realize that age is not the only factor, and possibly not even the deciding one, the more likely we can start making this unique and historical situation work instead of working to make it unique.

But what happens when your client doesn’t use the same vocabulary?

I had this happen awhile back and it was instructive in how to try to have a conversation about communications strategy without resorting to jargon.  The disconnect in this case was the use of “press release.”   The client I was working with kept referring to wanting a “press release” when that wasn’t my recommended approach.  Or, for that matter, what I thought he really wanted either but it was the term he was most familiar with.  So what do you do?  Do you give in and say yes, and then do what you really think is best?  Or do you take a step back and try to define the outcome you want to achieve, strip out the jargon or confusing language, and agree on the approach.

In this case, I took the latter tack and eventually finished what was a challenging phone call relieved that it seemed that we were finally “on the same page.”  Until I got his follow up email, reiterating that he was expecting the press release by Monday.

Ah, such is the life of a consultant.

In today’s workplace, the primary unifying force is the Internet, but for the most part that unity goes only as far as its general availability to most people.  Unlike watching TV, being on the ‘net is not a passive experience – you search, upload, download, cut, paste, and engage in a plethora of activity.  While the ability to interact with the Internet crosses generational lines, it doesn’t take a sociologist to note that different generations have reacted differently to the Internet experience and have taken those differences into the workplace.

For the first time in the history of the workplace – outside of the family farm – we now have a significant number of 60, 40 and 20-somethings working side-by-side.  Each of these generations has brought with them decidedly different views as to how information is generated, shared and controlled.  The Internet’s evolution into a deep, broad and transparent source of information and entertainment has both created and compounded these differences.

Consequently, communication between management and employees has become far more complex.  It’s bound to become even more so as the Internet continues to evolve and the fourth generation to yet be named enters the workforce with expectations possibly even more unlike the ones before it.   Look for the best places to work to be those that take the differences and complex generational interactions into account—and have found a way to use the Internet as a way to bring them together.

For anyone interested in truthful communication, this is the season when you can engage your own communication intelligence to uncover the nature of the abuses. In the end it’s an insult to our collective intelligence for our politicians to use such tired techniques as guilt by association, name-calling and omission of pertinent facts to distort the truth. But that’s the hard currency of negative campaigning as well as an affront to the democratic process.

Regardless of our politics, we should all be on guard for these obvious abuses and respond accordingly. Watch the presidential debates as well as the political ads and analyze each attempt to propagandize rather than inform. I guarantee you that it will be an interesting and enlightening lesson in Propaganda 101 as you score each kind of subtle or not so subtle abuse.

Aside from deliberate language abuse to confuse and deceive, another less obvious abuse is careless or misleading labeling. A great example is the recent effort to stabilize the credit markets, an effort unfortunately labeled as ‘a bailout of Wall Street’ rather than ‘an attempt to rescue Main Street’ from an economic disaster. Anyone with the most basic understanding of public relations would avoid this incendiary and elementary gaff.

If it weren’t so important to our collective futures, this behavior could entertain and titillate those of us who value the power of forthright communication. Instead it’s more than a little depressing.